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Proclaiming the birth of a new civil rights movement

Published on April 2, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, migration, Northern America, politics

Lots of demonstrations recently – not only in Paris, but also in the USA. According to anthropologist Roberto J. Gonzalez the recent mass demonstration against a tougher immigration policy (bill HR 4437) is proclaiming “the birth of a new civil rights movement”:

For many other young people — those without documents — the proposed legislation threatened to shatter their American dreams of a better future.
(…)
The walkouts are part of a larger wave of mass demonstrations in which immigrants and those sympathetic to their cause have been led by Latino activists. They have been turning out in the hundreds of thousands — a quarter of a million in Chicago, half a million in Los Angeles, and many thousands more in Phoenix, Milwaukee, Dallas and other cities.

Those participating in the marches are expressing much more than opposition to the xenophobic proposals of a Midwest congressman. They are proclaiming the birth of a new civil rights movement — a movement seeking to reclaim the dignity of all people living within our country’s borders, regardless of color, creed or nationality.

(…)

Mass marches, rallies and demonstrations are deeply rooted American traditions in our country, a land of immigrants seeking new opportunities. Howard Zinn‘s groundbreaking book, “A People’s History of the United States,” recounts hundreds of cases in which ordinary people — women, slaves, students, working people, immigrants — have transformed our country against incredible odds by doing extraordinary things.

>> read the whole story at Mercury News

Roberto J. Gonzalez has among others written the book Anthropologists in the Public Sphere : Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power. For Anthropology News 2003 (AAA) he wrote the text Speaking Out on War, Peace and Power. Towards a Preventative Diplomacy.

Thousands stage second day of demonstrations in California for immigrants’ rights (OhMyNews, 26.3.06)

Lots of demonstrations recently - not only in Paris, but also in the USA. According to anthropologist Roberto J. Gonzalez the recent mass demonstration against a tougher immigration policy (bill HR 4437) is proclaiming "the birth of a new civil…

Too engaged anthropology? The Lumpenproletariat on the US-Mexican Border

Published on March 26, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, books, ethics, migration, Northern America, poverty, Us and Them

“The most important information, which we can get out of this study, is how and what kind of action one can take.”

How much should anthropologists get involved in changing the lives of their informants? Johannes Wilm didn’t limit his research to presenting his findings about the daily life in in Douglas, an US-mexican border town. In his conclusion of his book On the Margins: US Americans in a bordertown to Mexico, he considers several forms for action.

The challenge: More than half of the 14000 inhabitants in Douglas are unemployed, 53% of the under 18 years old are officially living under the poverty line. The main source of income for the town: Smuggling of people and drugs. He proposes among others:

Constantly high unemployment figures can tell us, that an organization of the lumpenproletariat is neccessary in the planning of a world revolution or some more localized struggle for a democratic and economically just society.

It becomes obvious that Wilm works within a Marxist framework. He is an peace and media activist and has been socialized through the globalisation from below movement.

People in bordertowns are especially skilled, he found:

Also, in a border town, knowledge is spread according to a much more heterogeneous pattern, and a group of people cooperating across the various barriers will therefore be likely to build up a great amount of knowledge of how to circumvent the power apparatus of either of the involved states. Just for this, in the planning of a cross-national or global change, towns like Douglas should not be ignored.

In bordertowns, we find more ethnic diversity than in other areas. This might be a hinder? Wilm denies:

While ethnic diversity often has been seen as a hinder to organisation, it seems that combined with unemployment, its force is not as negative. In cases where people are forced to live close together and each person only has access to a part of the things seen as desirable (…), it even integrates rather than segregates.

The inhabitants with Mexican background are often “the better Americans”:

And while lots of Hispanics with strong personal ties to Mexico in Douglas seem to believe in the “American way of life”, it is Anglos that are the first ones to actively break out of the hegemonic space once they have the chance. (…) It is Anglos that represent resistance and not Hispanics.

He quotes an Hispanic father who has returned from the war in Iraq:

“Seen to many dead children”, he explains, while he almost seems to start to cry. However, he finds time commenting on the amount of Anglos in the military. “I guess white people don’t like serving their country that much” as he puts it.

Generally, he found, that ethnicity / race or class don’t play a role in the daily life in Douglas. That’s due to the economic crisis in his view:

Even though Douglas has had a history of segregation based on ethnicity, the complete lack of any kind of job for vast proportions of the population, and consequently the prevalence of the lumpenproletariat, has also done away with the ethnic model of stratification. None of my Anglo informants are in any position of power due to their ethnic background.

(…)

Had I been in Douglas during the good days of American capitalism, while Phelps Dodge still was there, they would have been strictly segregated according to race in the earlier period, or according to income layer in the latter period. Keoki, Art and Tim, all with somewhat more of an intellectual background also find themselves in this classless society in which everyone is part of the lumpenproletariat.

While I agree that advocacy is one of anthropologists’ jobs, we should, I think, be cautious about presenting final solutions as he does when he describes the problems connected with organizing people:

(…) A fourth problem (…), the amount of Marxist or anarchist literature read by the members of the lumpenproletariat seems quite low, and is often replaced by the Bible, Adam Smith or, in the case of the cultural elite, various critics who are looking at single issues. This means that agitation has to start from the very beginning.
(…) What has to be done, is to develop a generic psychologic strategy to win over people with background from “serving the nation”.

>> more information on the book

>> download the whole book (pdf, 30 MB )

"The most important information, which we can get out of this study, is how and what kind of action one can take."

How much should anthropologists get involved in changing the lives of their informants? Johannes Wilm didn't limit his research…

Fieldwork as cab-driver: "An amazing other world"

Published on March 20, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, fieldwork / methods, Northern America

(LINKS UPDATED 15.9.2022) It seems as if anthropologist Robert Leonard has written a fascinating book according the Des Moines Register. It’s called Yellow Cab:

When anthropologist Robert Leonard took a second job as a cab driver out of economic necessity, he found an “amazing other world.” He learned about capitalism from drug dealers and prostitutes and hope from carnival workers; he learned about broken families from businessmen and thankfulness from broken vagabonds.

The cab as an ideal place to conduct fieldwork? Leonard says:

“People, in general, are unappreciated. No one says, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ We don’t ask each other that. But people want to talk about themselves. They don’t want to be in a cab, so they talk, knowing they are not likely to see you again.”

“You develop a sixth sense about people just by how they look at you. I’m an observer. I’m used to looking at things closely. I could sense danger by the way they approached the cab. But it really reinforced my positive view of humanity. I met a lot of the smartest people I’ve met in my life.”

>> read the whole story in the Des Moines Register

(LINKS UPDATED 15.9.2022) It seems as if anthropologist Robert Leonard has written a fascinating book according the Des Moines Register. It's called Yellow Cab:

When anthropologist Robert Leonard took a second job as a cab driver out of economic necessity,…

Censorship of research in the USA: Iranians not allowed to publish papers

Published on March 15, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, Northern America, politics, University / Academia

Jill Walker reports about censorship of research in the USA:

Recently, two articles by teams from the University of Bergen were accepted by prominent US journals and then turned down because, the publishers said, “we cannot publish your paper because the United States government restricts publishers from publishing papers that have an affiliation with the government of Iran.” Some of the authors were Iranian citizens.

She comments:

Isn’t that astounding, though? The results results are presumably important, since they were accepted in an internationally reknowned, peer reviewed journal. They have nothing to do with bombs or weapons of mass destruction or politics – this is geology and oil and such. And yet the US government refuses to allow US journals to publish this, just because some of the authors – scholars, not politicians – have Iranian passports? How peculiar that the country that (in theory) has the strongest tradition of freedom of speech and democracy stifles research and communication like this.

>> read the whole post and the comments

The rector of Bergen University said to the Norwegian media that this was “unacceptable political censorship”, “previously known only from totalitarian regimes”. Matthias Kaiser from the National Committees for Research Ethics in Norway says, the American science community can no longer be regarded as a part of the international science community.

~~There’s no English language coverage available~~,

>> information from the University in Bergen on this issue

>> information on the Patriot Act which is the reason of this problems

A few weeks ago, the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the world’s largest association of scholars of religion, criticized a similar “ideological exclusion” of knowlewdge and scholars. They joined a lawsuit that challenges a key provision of the USA Patriot Act, according to the blog Mirror of Justice:

Citing the 2004 revocation of a travel visa for noted Swiss scholar of Islam Tariq Ramadan, the suit contends that an “ideological exclusion” provision of the Patriot Act is being used to impede the free circulation of scholars and scholarly debate that are integral to academic freedom.

Commenting on the suit, AAR Executive Director Barbara DeConcini stated that “preventing foreign scholars like Professor Ramadan from visiting the U.S. limits not only the ability of scholars here to enhance their own knowledge, but also their ability to inform students, journalists, public policy makers, and other members of the public who rely on scholars’ work to acquire a better understanding of critical current issues involving religion.

>> read the whole post “Religion Scholars Challenge Patriot Act”

>> AlterNet: Banned in America: Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland, one of the world’s most important Muslim scholars, ran right into the USA Patriot Act

>> “War on terror”: CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information

>> News on Patriot Act and Academic Freedom

>> The Patriot Act and Civil Liberties. Information and Resources

Jill Walker reports about censorship of research in the USA:

Recently, two articles by teams from the University of Bergen were accepted by prominent US journals and then turned down because, the publishers said, "we cannot publish your paper because the…

Ethnographic Research: Gated Communities Don’t Lead to Security

Published on March 12, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Northern America, Us and Them

(LINKS UPDATED 18.9.2020) Gated communities are becoming more and more popular in America. They are no longer ghettoes for the rich and wealthy. Behind fences and walls, more than eight million Americans live in their own parallel societies. Setha Low, professor of environmental psychology and anthropology, has conducted ten years of fieldwork in gated communities in New York, Texas and Mexico City and why there has been an increase in Americans moving to gated communities. The University of California at Irvine’s campus newspaper, New University reports about a recent lecture by Setha Low:

Her research revealed that gated communities don’t necessarily have less crime than the surrounding area. In addition, residents did not find the friendly community that they were looking for. She found that residents did feel safer, but they worried all the time about the guards and the workers, and the residents had their home security systems on all the time.

>> read the whole story in New University (Link updated with copy)

In an earlier text at arcadejournal.com (no longer online), Setha Low writes:

Most people who move to gated communities are not aware of what they lose in this quest for safety and privacy. Growing up with an implicit fortress mentality, many children may experience more, not less, fear of people outside the gates.

In an review of Setha Low’s book Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America, Alan Greenblatt provides more details:

Gated communities “preselect a ready-made community of socially and economically similar people,” Low writes. But as her interviews reveal, in time that self-selection feeds upon itself and fear of outsiders grows. Low quotes a San Antonio woman identified as “Felicia” as saying “if you go downtown, which is much more mixed, where everybody goes, I feel much more threatened.” Due to lack of exposure, Felicia’s young daughter has grown afraid of poor people on the rare occasions she encounters any. Other residents are even more open about such issues. A teenager dressed in a tennis skirt for a Fourth of July party casually tells Low that the Mexicans downtown “are dangerous, packing knives and guns.” Low blames gated communities for exacerbating these segregationist or even racist tendencies.

>> read the whole review on findarticles.com (Link updated with copy)

SEE ALSO:

Interview with Setha Low on NPR

Gated communities more popular, and not just for the rich (USA Today)

Wikipedia on Gated Communities

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Risking security. Paradoxes of social cohesion

(LINKS UPDATED 18.9.2020) Gated communities are becoming more and more popular in America. They are no longer ghettoes for the rich and wealthy. Behind fences and walls, more than eight million Americans live in their own parallel societies. Setha Low,…